by Carter Chris
As Hunter’s attention was diverted from her to her neighbor, who was standing in the corridor directly behind him, Angela used the heels of her feet to push against the wall just beneath her window ledge, throwing herself to her left, in the direction of the drainpipe. It was an easy leap.
Angela grabbed the pipe with both hands, also clamping it with her thighs. Her knees scraped against the building wall, but it was nothing that she couldn’t handle.
The easiest way to get down to the ground below was to slide down the pipe, but it had to be done in three quick stages, as the thick metal rings that had been used to fix the pipe to the wall wouldn’t allow a smooth, firefighter-like slide. But Angela had practiced it enough times to know exactly how to do it. Less than four seconds after leaping from her window, her feet were touching the ground down below. With a proud smile on her lips, she looked up at her open window before quickly turning on her heels to start her run . . . but that didn’t go half as well as she would have expected.
As Angela began turning, her movement was interrupted by Garcia, who was standing right behind her.
‘That was cute,’ he said, slapping his handcuffs around Angela’s right wrist before she could even blink. ‘Do you take bookings for birthday parties?’
Angela looked back at the detective in total surprise. ‘How the hell did you get down here so fast?’
Garcia smiled. ‘What, do you think you’re the only one with tricks?’ In a lightning-fast movement, he rotated his body to position himself just behind Angela. As he did, he reached for her left wrist and quickly cuffed it to her right one. ‘Ta-da,’ he said in a fanfare voice.
‘Let me go, you jerk.’ Angela tugged at the handcuffs. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘Is she all right?’ The question came from Hunter, whose entire torso now hung out of Angela’s apartment window above them.
‘We’re good here,’ Garcia replied, giving Hunter a thumbs up.
Hunter nodded. ‘Great. I think I’ll use the stairs, though.’
As Garcia escorted Angela toward the front of the building, the look in her eyes was cold fury, pure and simple.
Fourteen
In the basement of the Police Administration Building, Angela had been sitting alone inside one of the interrogation rooms for almost half an hour. Her hands were cuffed together by a foot-long chain that ran through a loop at the center of the metal table in front of her. The table and the chair she was sitting on were both bolted to the floor.
Leaving a suspect waiting in an interrogation room, typically in cuffs, was a very well-known psychological technique used by the police. The advantage of it was two-fold:
One – the waiting tended to heighten the suspect’s apprehension. It unnerved them. A nervous and anxious suspect was much more prone to make mistakes and contradict themselves, if they were lying during the interrogation. Leaving the suspect cuffed restricted their movements, but most importantly, it put forward the idea that the police already considered that person to be guilty of something, which also served to amplify the suspect’s anxiety.
Advantage number two was that, despite the suspect having been left alone, the police would, without a doubt, have eyes and ears in that interrogation room. Someone, either through a two-way mirror or via CCTV cameras, would be studying the suspect’s movements, reactions and facial expressions. That someone would usually be the interrogating detective or a trained psychologist. The microphones inside the room would also have been turned on. Sometimes the cops got lucky and the suspect, when left alone for any significant amount of time, would say something to himself. Guilty and nervous suspects tended to rehearse what to say.
The interrogation room that Angela was in did have a two-way mirror – a very large one to the right of where she was sitting. At the other side of it, Hunter and Garcia had been attentively observing Angela from the start and they were both impressed by how calm she had been.
As soon as Angela was left by herself, she slouched on her chair as best as she could, taking into account that her hands were cuffed to the tabletop, rested her head against the chair’s backrest, closed her eyes and practically went to sleep. No angry jerking of the cuffs. No swearing at the police officer. No neck or shoulder movement to relax her muscles. No looking around the room anxiously. No impatient shaking of the legs. Nothing. No signs of being nervous whatsoever. In fact, Angela looked like she was about to doze off when Hunter and Garcia finally opened the door and stepped inside.
‘How are you doing?’ Hunter asked, as he approached the table and placed a plastic cup full of water in front of her. ‘My name is Detective Robert Hunter and this is Detective Carlos Garcia.’
Angela wore all black: jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie that carried a metal band’s name across its front that was practically unreadable. On her feet she wore running sneakers. Her back-pack had been confiscated and searched. They found over one thousand dollars in cash, a cellphone and a change of clothes.
‘How am I doing?’ Angela asked rhetorically, in a voice that carried more irritation than anger. Her gaze kept moving from one detective to the other. ‘I’m bored and pretty pissed off, that’s how I’m doing. I’ve been sitting here for God knows how long, chained to this table like an animal, and I still don’t know what I’m doing here.’
Hunter and Garcia had given Angela the ‘Deluxe’ silent treatment on their way to the PAB.
‘No one has told me squat so far,’ she continued, the intensity of her stare giving both detectives a new tan. ‘Am I under arrest for something here? Because if I am, you guys fucked up, big time. I was not read my rights, I was not given my phone call, I was not informed of the reason why I was being arrested and I’ve been treated like a smelly stray dog since I got here. And then there’s the door to my apartment, which was kicked in.’ She chuckled. ‘Oh man, am I going to have your asses for this.’
Hunter waited until Angela was done ranting.
‘Would you prefer coffee rather than water?’ he asked in an amicable tone, as he uncuffed her hands. Before doing so, he placed the paper folder he had with him on the table. In small black letters across the front of it was the name ‘Angela Wood’. As Hunter freed Angela’s hands, he saw her quickly peek at it with concerned eyes.
‘No,’ she replied, massaging her wrists and sitting up on her chair. ‘I’d rather you tell me what the hell this is all about. Am I under arrest for something?’
Hunter picked up the folder and he and Garcia sat down across the table from her.
‘Should you be?’ Garcia asked.
She glared at him. ‘Should I be what . . . under arrest? No, why should I?’
Garcia crossed his right leg over his left. ‘I don’t know. You tell us.’
Angela regarded the two detectives in front of her for a few seconds before allowing her lips to break into a confident smile. Her teeth were perfectly aligned and completely stain-free.
‘Oh, I see what you’re doing here,’ she said, assuming a much more relaxed position on her chair. ‘That’s why there’s been no move from either of you to record this interview, isn’t it? Because you’ve got nothing on me.’
Both detectives stayed silent.
‘So since you’ve got nothing on me, what you decided to do was use the most basic of psychological techniques to try to get me to slip up.’ She laughed. ‘The silent treatment in the car, leaving me waiting in here for over twenty minutes, the file with my name on it on the table . . . all of it.’
She’s pretty savvy, Hunter thought. His and Garcia’s poker faces, nonetheless, didn’t change.
‘Where did you learn that?’ Angela continued. ‘Psychology for Dummies?’ She shook her head sarcastically. ‘Well, you’re not doing a very good job here, Detective . . .?
‘Garcia.’
‘Maybe the two of you should try reading some other psychology books too, Detective Garcia.’
The ‘lone waiting’ trick wasn’t the only reason Hunter and Garcia had take
n half an hour to join Angela. They’d been waiting for her file.
Interrogation rule number one: know as much in advance as you possibly can about the suspect.
‘I haven’t read Psychology for Dummies,’ Garcia admitted. ‘Have you?’ The question was directed at Hunter.
‘No,’ Hunter replied. ‘I can’t say I have.’
‘Do you recommend it?’ Garcia asked Angela.
She laughed. ‘For you? Yes. It might help you polish your technique.’
Hunter nodded his agreement before flipping open the paper folder and skimming through the first page of her file. Not that he needed to do so. He had already read the entire document while in the observation room. The file was only five pages long.
Angela tried her best to read the man across the table from her, but Hunter’s facial expression gave nothing away.
‘So,’ she asked. ‘Are you going to tell me the truth about what I’m doing here, or are you going to lie like before?’
Hunter looked at Angela quizzically.
‘Back in my place, remember?’ She pulled a face and her voice took on a mocking tone. ‘We’re not here to take you in. I give you my word. We really just want to talk to you. We need your help.’ Her tone went back to normal. ‘What a crock of shit.’
Hunter was surprised that, even under pressure, Angela had remembered what he had told her back in her apartment word-for-word.
‘But do you know what the funny thing is?’ Angela asked. ‘For some reason, I almost believed you.’
‘I apologize for the lack of information,’ Hunter said. ‘You’re right. We should’ve been more forthcoming with it.’
Slowly, Angela’s lips stretched into another amused smile. ‘Oh wow, just look at you, backpedaling like a champ. Is that because you now know that you’ve fucked up and I can sue your ass for this, or is this just another trick from your arsenal of bullshit tricks?’
‘It’s not a trick,’ Hunter told her.
From the folder in his hands, Hunter retrieved an evidence bag containing a Polaroid photo and placed it on the table in front of Angela.
‘This is why you’re here.’
Angela’s eyes moved to it and the smile vanished.
The Polaroid was a portrait photo of a boy who looked to be around seventeen years old. His blond hair was longish, skater/ grunge rock style. His pale blue eyes were puffy, the white in them more reddish than white, indicating that he’d been crying for some time. His expression was the definition of fear.
‘Can you tell us who this is?’ Garcia asked.
Angela’s attention stayed on the photo. Her lips stayed sealed.
‘Did you take this photo?’ Garcia tried a different approach.
‘No.’ Angela’s reply had been a reflex rather than a conscious answer. Garcia’s question had clearly rattled her.
‘Do you know who took this photo?’ he pushed. ‘Were you present at the time?’
‘No.’ Again, another reflex answer. This time, fear came through in her tone.
‘That’s funny,’ Garcia added, giving Angela no time to elaborate. ‘Because we found your fingerprints all over it.’
A huge knot tightened inside Angela’s throat. She had made a mistake. She had made a terrible mistake.
Angela had delivered that horrible book to Dr. Slater’s post-box in the very early hours of Sunday morning. Before doing so, she had wiped down the book cover and the edges of every page she had touched, she was very certain of that, but it looked like in her rush and desperation to get rid of that notebook, she had somehow forgotten about the photo she had touched . . . the boy. Thinking back, she couldn’t remember wiping it clean, and that had obviously been how they had managed to track her down so quickly. She had stupidly given them her own fingerprint. In silence, she cursed herself for her mistake.
It took Angela several seconds to be able to drag her stare away from the photo and back to Hunter. Fear had no doubt crept into her eyes. If the LAPD had found her prints on a photo inside that sick book, of course they would think that she was somehow implicated with it.
When Garcia told her that her fingerprints had been found on that photo, he and Hunter saw the color drain from her face.
‘So,’ Garcia continued. ‘If you didn’t take this photo and you weren’t present when it was taken either, can you please explain to us why your prints were the only prints that were found on it?’
Angela’s gut was telling her to tell Hunter and Garcia the truth – that she had no idea who the boy in that photo was . . . that she had nothing to do with that photo or that book – but she knew much better than that. She knew that the ‘truth’ didn’t matter. What mattered was what she could prove. Not to mention that she had no way of telling them the truth without revealing that she was a professional pickpocket. Not a great move when you’re locked in a room with two detectives inside the LAPD headquarters.
This time Angela went with reason instead of impulse.
‘Am I under arrest here?’ she asked. ‘Because if I am, I’d like to exercise my right to my phone call.’ The look in her eyes was defiant.
‘No,’ Garcia finally replied. He wanted to add “not yet”, but he decided to keep that detail out for the time being.
‘Then I’m free to go, right?’ Her stare moved from Garcia to Hunter. ‘So I guess that’s what I’ll do, right about now.’
Angela got to her feet.
‘One last question, if I may?’ Hunter said.
Angela crossed her arms over her chest.
‘The boy in the photo,’ Hunter said, nodding at the Polaroid. ‘Does he remind you of your brother?’
Fifteen
Angela Wood had always been as bright as they came. At the end of her sophomore year, her teachers were so impressed with her grades that they decided to put her through a battery of tests and exams to see if she was good enough to skip a whole year in school. To no one’s surprise, she aced them all, which culminated in Angela bypassing all the juniors and becoming a senior at the age of fifteen.
The summer her brother died, Angela had just turned sixteen. She had also just graduated from high school and, for the time being, she was really enjoying being able to sleep in on weekdays. That morning, though, she didn’t manage to sleep in as much as she would’ve liked to. At around 7:30 a.m., she was hastily woken up by a thunderclap so powerful she could feel her bed shake.
Despite officially being the second week of summer, when the temperatures in Pocatello could get up to as high as thirty-one degrees Celsius, that Thursday had been an ugly day from the start, with frightening dark clouds, severely strong winds and blindingly bright lightning. The thunder that had woken Angela up was the first in a series, announcing the torrential rain that was gaining momentum just over the horizon. And rain it did. For hours on end.
That afternoon, since leaving the house was completely out of the question, Angela spent it with her favorite pastime – books. She loved reading and even during the school year, despite all the exams and homework, she would still get through at least seven to ten books a month. Her brother Shawn, who was only eleven at the time, spent the day in front of the TV, playing video games.
The rain, which had started pelting down just after nine in the morning, finally let off at around three in the afternoon. Outside, the streets and roads looked like flowing rivers, as the city’s drainage system struggled to cope with the sheer volume of water that had descended over the town – one month’s rain in just a little over six hours – but as a crack of blue light finally slit through the tired, gray sky, it looked like the flood was over at last.
‘It stopped,’ Shawn had said, looking out the window. ‘It’s finally stopped.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Angela had replied. ‘A little longer and we would’ve needed life vests.’
‘Maybe some people do,’ Shawn had said. ‘We live up a hill, remember? Maybe some houses got flooded.’
‘Maybe.’ Angela had accepted it, without
too much concern.
Shawn kept staring out the window for a while. ‘I’m hungry,’ he had said.
‘Why are you telling me? Go check the fridge.’
‘I did, earlier, we don’t have anything. You’re not hungry?’
‘Not particularly, no. Anyway, Mom and Dad will be home from work soon and we’ll have dinner, so chill out.’
‘It’s almost three-thirty,’ Shawn had said, pointing to the clock on their living room wall. ‘Mom and Dad won’t be home until around six, maybe even later with all this rain out there. Dinner won’t be until gone seven. I’ll starve by then.’
‘Oh my God, you’re so dramatic,’ Angela had said. She was getting annoyed by the interruptions to her reading. ‘Have a banana or something. We’ve got plenty of those.’
Shawn had replied with a disgusted face. ‘I hate bananas. You know that.’
‘OK, so go make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich then. Do whatever you like. Just stop bothering me.’
‘I would if we had any bread or jelly, but we’re out of both. How long haven’t you been in the kitchen, Angie?’
‘Well, what do you want me to do, Shawn? Turn myself into some food for you?’
‘No, but we could take a walk to the store and get some. You must be bored of reading by now. You’ve been reading all day long.’
‘Are you bored of playing video games?’
‘No.’
‘There’s your answer. And I’m not going out in this rain. I’m not a fish.’
‘It’s not raining anymore.’ Shawn had walked back to the window. ‘And look, the black clouds are going away.’
Angela didn’t look.
‘C’mon, Angie, please, I’m hungry and the store is just down the road. Fifteen minutes and we’re there and back. You can go back to your book then.’